Wednesday, January 09, 2013

While The Media Goes Berserk over Gang Rapes in India They Ignore The 1. 3 Million Rapes per Year In America

... Rape is horrible. But it is not horrible for all the reasons that have been drilled into the heads of Indian women. It is horrible because you are violated, you are scared, someone else takes control of your body and hurts you in the most intimate way. It is not horrible because you lose your “virtue.” It is not horrible because your father and your brother are dishonored. I reject the notion that my virtue is located in my vagina, just as I reject the notion that men’s brains are in their genitals.

If we take honor out of the equation, rape will still be horrible, but it will be a personal, and not a societal, horror. We will be able to give women who have been assaulted what they truly need: not a load of rubbish about how they should feel guilty or ashamed, but empathy for going through a terrible trauma.

And the USA claiming to be "God's City On The Hill" and a beacon of justice to the world should be ashamed of the epidemic of rape and cover-up of rapes in the US' Military

"... There is a perfect storm of conditions to keep this secret," she says, speaking from Los Angeles. "There is no incentive to report rape, it is not treated as a priority in the military and the nature of the crime means that it is so implosively devastating that many women get the blame, or blame themselves."The statistics revealed in The Invisible War ...make shocking reading: a female soldier in combat zones is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire, over 20% of female veterans have been sexually assaulted while serving in the US army, of 3,192 sexual-assault reports in 2011 only 191 members of the military were convicted at courts martial.

*Rape in India has become a galvanizing issue for the women of India and all those who are concerned about human rights and freedoms for all citizens not just male citizens.
*Rape in USA downplayed by government and the Mainstream Media
*Rape frequency in America puts the nation in the top ten -another instance where America proves to be 'exceptional' in a bad way as it is in number of murders, number of mass murders, numbers of people incarcerated , the amount of gun related violence and domestic violence.

Recently there has been a lot of concern raised in the Western and especially the US Mainstream Media about cases of gang rape in India in which the women who are the victims are treated as if they are the ones in the wrong rather than the rapists.

In India as in some other societies rape is unfortunately and unjustly seen not so much as a terrible crime committed against a woman but as a blemish on the woman's family's honor especially the males in her family fathers, brothers , husbands etc. The woman's feelings of being violated and her feelings of betrayal ,losing her own honor doesn't seem to enter into the equation . In the recent case the police told the rape victim that her best solution was not to bring these men to trial but for her to marry one of her assailants.

For decades sexual violence against women in India has gone unreported and even when an arrest is made, India's national crime bureau says just 26% of the rape cases end with a conviction.

The brutal gang rape and murder of a 23 year-old woman in New Delhi last month has sparked international outrage and women everywhere are hoping its a catalyst for change.

As CNN host Erin Burnett and her guest Fareed Zakaria point out America when it comes to number of rapes and or sexual assaults is not much better off than India. The USA is in the top ten nations for the frequency of rape and the lack of reporting of rapes and charges being laid leading to convictions. So in India a large portion of the male population especially refuse to accept that their attitudes towards rape, sexual assault , harassment etc. is not a real problem.

In America there are those like Conservative Republicans such as Todd Aiken who claimed women cannot get pregnant via "a legitimate rape" and Richard Murdock of Indiana claimed pregnancy due to rape is a gift from God have a twisted views about rape.

Fareed Zakaria refers to the public outrage and massive demonstrations in India as "India's Arab" which may lead to a tectonic shift in India's attitudes towards women 's rights and human rights in general.

Five men charged with the brutal rape and murder of a 23-year-old Indian woman appeared in court today. A shouting match erupted when a lawyer stepped forward to represent the accused and he was criticized by his colleagues who screamed, "you will not defend those barbarians."

So in India the twisted attitudes towards sexual-assault and rape is not hidden in any way but is part of the sexist misogynistic culture in which women are seen as purely sexual objects .

So it is the woman who is treated as if she had committed a crime. If married by being raped she is accused of committing adultery. If unmarried she is depicted as being a loose woman ,a slut, a whore etc. who brings shame on her family. The raped woman is in either case supposed to kill herself or to be murdered by a male relative to return honor to the family or it is left up to the community to decide her fate and so the rape victim is then beaten severely or stoned to death or beheaded. There is in some societies or cultures little or no punishment for the rapist.

While in other cultures or societies both parties are treated equally with severe punishment. This latter case still does not rise to being even the appearance of justice since the victim is treated the same as the perpetrator. Sohaila Abdulat of India writes about when she was gang raped and about what women in India should learn or unlearn that rape is not their fault and that they are the victims in rape cases not their family their Good Name or honor but rather is an excruciatingly painful experience it was and it was a long painful process to finally be able to live as she once had.

But Americans and Canadians and other Western Nations should stop acting so self-righteous since it was not long ago and in fact still happens that women reporting a rape were often treated badly and the community would in more cases than not feel sorry for the men involved who were the perpetrators.

Often courts would consider the woman's character ie if unmarried was she still a virgin , how many sex partners has she had and other details about her personal life and including the type of clothing she wears; is she giving off mixed signals to men and so on. Onus was on her rather than the accused to prove she was not guilty.

Such details should not be brought up as being of any importance related to a charge of rape. Rape is not the same as consensual sex it is a matter not of sex but power in which one way or another the victim is physically forced to have sex or she is coerced into it or by threats or the use of drugs and alcohol in which case the woman is no longer conscious or able to resist or to even know what is happening etc.

THIRTY-TWO years ago, when I was 17 and living in Bombay, I was gang raped and nearly killed. Three years later, outraged at the silence and misconceptions around rape, I wrote a fiery essay under my own name describing my experience for an Indian women’s magazine. It created a stir in the women’s movement — and in my family — and then it quietly disappeared.

Then, last week, I looked at my e-mail and there it was. As part of the outpouring of public rage after a young woman’s rape and death in Delhi, somebody posted the article online and it went viral. Since then, I have received a deluge of messages from people expressing their support.

... Rape is horrible. But it is not horrible for all the reasons that have been drilled into the heads of Indian women. It is horrible because you are violated, you are scared, someone else takes control of your body and hurts you in the most intimate way. It is not horrible because you lose your “virtue.” It is not horrible because your father and your brother are dishonored. I reject the notion that my virtue is located in my vagina, just as I reject the notion that men’s brains are in their genitals.

If we take honor out of the equation, rape will still be horrible, but it will be a personal, and not a societal, horror. We will be able to give women who have been assaulted what they truly need: not a load of rubbish about how they should feel guilty or ashamed, but empathy for going through a terrible trauma.

The week after I was attacked, I heard the story of a woman who was raped in a nearby suburb. She came home, went into the kitchen, set herself on fire and died. The person who told me the story was full of admiration for her selflessness in preserving her husband’s honor. Thanks to my parents, I never did understand this.

But the American Mainstream Media and public are supposedly outraged by these cases in India or other countries or other societies and cultures and yet are reluctant to have serious discussions about how wide spread rape is in America and in certain American institutions such as the US military where rape is fairly common.

There is still in America a reluctance on the part of victims of rape to report the crime committed to authorities for fear of ridicule, of disbelief and knowing only a few of those cases reported end up leading to criminal charges and then few of those charged are actually found guilty or if they are often receive sentencing far below what they should so at the end of the day the victim is victimized by those in authority who should be on the side of the victim.

An exhaustive government survey of rape and domestic violence... affirmed that sexual violence against women remains endemic in the United States and in some instances may be far more common than previously thought. Nearly one in five women surveyed said they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape at some point, and one in four reported having been beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women have been stalked, according to the report.

“That almost one in five women have been raped in their lifetime is very striking and, I think, will be surprising to a lot of people,” said Linda C. Degutis, director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which conducted the survey.

“I don’t think we’ve really known that it was this prevalent in the population,” she said. ...1 percent of women surveyed reported being raped in the previous year, a figure that suggests that 1.3 million American women annually may be victims of rape or attempted rape.

Somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 2 minutes, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. In 1995, 354,670 women were the victims of a rape or sexual assault. (NationalCrime Victimization Survey. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 1996.)

Over the last two years, more than 787,000 women were the victim of a rape or sexual assault. (National Crime Victimization Survey. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S.Department of Justice, 1996.) The FBI estimates that 72 of every 100,000 females in the United States were raped last year. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Statistics, 1996.)

Meanwhile Westerners including Americans act as if rape were a rarity in their own countries and that women report rapes without having to be concerned about repercussions. In fact only some 30% of women in America who are victims of sexual assault report the sexual assaults to the authorities. Most rape victims fear that they will not be taken seriously or told that it was their own fault for being on the street in provocative clothing or were out drinking etc.

Very few charges of rape even in the USA lead to convictions while the rape victim is depicted as lying about what happened and so is seen as a tease, a slut , or seeking revenge or seeking attention . It is astounding to say the least that the US federal government only a year ago expanded the definition of rape beyond forcible vaginal penetration.

Just imagine for some unknown reason forced oral or anal sex and other forms of sexual assault were not considered as equal to rape that is vaginal penetration but are now included in the broadened definition of the crime of sexual assault or rape .

One of the other significant changes is that men who are sexually assaulted can be counted as amongst the victims of rape. After all of the the talk about prosecuting rapists these changes are only now taking effect. Only some 25% to 35% of rapes committed in America are reported and only about 25% of those lead to charges being brought.

U.S. officials are expanding the definition of rape to include men as well as women and any victim who is unable to give consent or who is violated with an object, long-sought changes aimed at collecting more accurate data about the sex crime. The first major revision of the term in more than 80 years comes in the wake of high-profile sexual assault cases and follows years of pressure from women's rights and gay advocacy groups to broaden the definition.

The Obama administration announced the revision on Friday. The change will allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation to collect better data on the number of rapes committed in the United States and give more accurate information to policymakers, Congress and researchers about the crime in order to help prevent and prosecute it, U.S. officials said.

...Until now, the FBI's standard counted only forcible vaginal penetration of a woman as "rape." The new definition expands rape to include oral and anal sex acts against women as well as men. It also says if a victim cannot give consent for any reason, the crime is a rape even if force is not used. That includes any victim who cannot consent due to alcohol or drug use, who is under the age of consent, or who is mentally or physically incapable of consent. 'MORE ACCURATE PICTURE' "It's going to give us a better and more accurate picture nationwide of the incidence of rape and where it is occurring," said

Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women. Experts agree that rape is one of the most under-reported crimes in the United States. And while the move on Friday only affects rapes that are actually reported to authorities, other advocates said that having a national definition would help raise awareness about what constitutes rape -- an important first step. "This change is about properly measuring the extent of rape in America. We now need to direct our attention to preventing rape and aggressively pursuing sexual predators," said Carol Tracy, head of the Women's Law Project rights group.